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Gwen Davis
Gwen Davis (born May 11, 1936) is an American poet, novelist, playwright, screenwriter, songwriter, and journalist. Life Overview Davis has written 18 novels, including the sexy bestseller The Pretenders. She has also written on travel for the Wall Street Journal Europe and for online publications such as the Huffington Post, and maintains a popular personal blog, Report from the Front, Gwen Davis Blog, "Report From the Front" http://reportfromfront.blogspot.com plus another blog reviewing Broadway theater productions, Will Blog for Broadway.Gwen Davis Blog, "Will Blog for Broadway" http://willblogforbroadway.blogspot.com Youth and education Davis was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and grew up in Manhattan, New York City. Her parents were divorced.People, September 24, 1979 Vol. 12 No. 13, Her father, real estate developer Lew Davis, later served as mayor of Tucson, winning office in 1961."Nation: Turnabout in Tucson, Time, Nov. 17, 1961,http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,939302,00.html,Gwen Davis's Blog, "Report From the Front" http://reportfromfront.blogspot.comIn Memoriam: Remembering Dennis Hopper, Vanity Fair, June 1, 2010, http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2010/06/remembering-dennis-hopper.html Her parents' separation when she was 5 started a lifetime of gypsying. She attended Bryn Mawr College. In 1954, at the age of 18, she went to Paris to study music and sang in a nightclub there until she gave into her mother's pleas to return to the U.S. She moved to California and continued singing, performing at the Purple Onion. She also obtained a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing from Stanford University. She was part of the Hollywood social scene from the late 1950s, coming into contact with a wide range of celebrities and befriending Dennis Hopper and many others. Some of her experiences inspired her first novel, Naked in Babylon. She married businessman and producer Don Mitchell, with whom she had two children, a daughter and a son. One of the Mitchells' mocking Academy Awards parties was the subject of a Time magazine article in 1970, which mentioned some of the celebrities — Shirley MacLaine, ZsaZsa Gabor, Lee Marvin and others—Davis and Mitchell counted among thei r friends."Show Business: Mocking the Mockery," Time, Apr. 20, 1970, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944053-2,00.html She authored a famous movie, What a Way to Go, and had a play on Broadway, The Best Laid Plans. Davis continues to write. She travels widely and has lived in Spain, Paris, Rome, London, Venice, New York and Hollywood. She lived for a while in Bali, Indonesia, but returned to the U.S., and divides her time between New York and Beverly Hills. Film and TV roles and appearances Davis appeared in "Rich and Famous", 1981, as a party guest. She was interviewed numerous times on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in 1971-1972, as well as on David Frost and the Virginia Graham Show. ''Touching'' lawsuits Her novel Touching, published in 1971, was not a commercial success, but it resulted in a highly controversial lawsuit. Davis spent 20 hours at Sandstone, a Topanga Canyon therapy center run by E. Paul Bindrim, who was known as the "father of Nude Psychotherapy"."E. Paul Bindrim; Father of Nude Psychotherapy," obituary by Myrna Oliver in the Los Angeles Times, January 8, 1998, http://articles.latimes.com/1998/jan/08/news/mn-6211 Bindrim, once nearly kicked out of the American Psychological Association, was known for holding what he called "nude marathons" — several clients were "placed in a warm pool for long sessions of touching and massaging, talking and sometimes shouting or acting out rage"."E. Paul Bindrim; Father of Nude Psychotherapy," obituary by Myrna Oliver in the Los Angeles Times, January 8, 1998 http://articles.latimes.com/1998/jan/08/news/mn-6211 Davis always claimed she had used her real-life experiences to inspire fiction, but that Bindrim was not the psychologist in her fictional story, and did not resemble him — her character was overweight, looked like Santa Claus, and had a Ph.D. By the time the case came to trial, Bindrim, who previously was bald and clean-shaven and had only a master's degree, changed his appearance, grew a beard, wound his hair around his head, time had turned it white, so he looked like Santa Claus, and obtained a Ph.D. from International College, upstairs from the Bruin theater in Westwood (International College was founded in 1970, and which at the time claimed it had "no classrooms, no lecture halls, no resident faculty." It s now out of business.) But all these changes made him appear like the psychologist in the book. He won his suit against Davis and her publisher, Doubleday. Doubleday then sued Davis, which raised the ire of many writers' organizations and won Davis the support of Kurt Vonnegut and others."Law: Writers' Rights and Wrongs, Time, Mar. 17, 1980, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,950396-1,00.html Publications Poetry *''American Woman Loose in the UK: Poems''. privately published, 1988. Novels * Naked in Babylon. New York: New American Library, 1960. * Someone's in the Kitchen with Dinah: A novel. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1962. * The War Babies. New York: Coward-McCann, 1966. * Sweet William. Cleveland, OH: World, 1967. * The Pretenders: A novel. New York: World, 1969. * Touching. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1971. * Kingdom Come. New York: Putnam, 1973. * Changes. Los Angeles: Nash, 1973. * The Motherland. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1974. * How to Survive in Suburbia When Your Hearts in the Himalayas. New York: Wyden Books, 1976. * The Aristocrats. Chicago: Playboy Press, 1977. *''The Set''. London: New English Library, 1978. * Ladies in Waiting. New York: Macmillan, 1979. * Marriage. New York: Arbor House, 1981. * Romance. New York: Arbor House, 1983. * Silk Lady. New York: Warner, 1986. * The Princess and the Pauper: An Erotic Fairy Tale, Boston: Little, Brown, 1989. * Jade. New York: Warner, 1991. * Happy at the Bel Air. Beverley Hills, CA: Dove, 1996. * West of Paradise. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998. * Lovesong. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 2000. * Scandal. Telemachus Press, 2011.Scandal, Amazon.com. Web, June 29, 2014. * The Daughter of God. Telemachus Press, 2012.The Daughter of God, Amazon.com. Web, June 29, 2014. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results = au:Gwen Davis, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, June 29, 2014. Film and TV writing credits * "Desperate Intruder," 1983 (TV) * "Better Late Than Never," 1982 * "What a Way to Go!," 1964 Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy Internet Movie Database.IMDB, See also *List of U.S. poets References External links ;Audio / video *Eulogy for Happy read by Gregory Peck ;About * Gwen Davis at IMDb * The Only Gwen, Davis' Official website. * Report from the Front, Davis' Official weblog * Will Blog for Broadway, Davis' Blog. Category:1936 births Category:American novelists Category:American poets Category:Living people Category:20th-century poets Category:20th-century women writers Category:American women writers Category:English-language poets Category:Poets Category:Women poets